Whether drawn by splendid designs or heartfelt recollections, or the curiosity of what will be the next big thing, streetwear has proudly proven its sustainability in a volatile fashion marketplace. Make no bones about it, streetwear is meant to be enjoyed and experienced in the proper fashion. Rich textures and hues mesmerize the consumers with waves of exotic yet familiar styles. Streetwear is street fashion that saw its humble beginnings take root in California’s surf and skate culture. Since then, it has grown to encompass elements of hip-hop fashion, Japanese street fashion, and lately modern haute couture fashion. Streetwear more than often centers on more relaxed pieces such as jeans, baseball caps, hoodies and sneakers.

Nevertheless, let me be clear; streetwear was born in the USA. Throughout history, the USA has played a significantly creative role in fashion and quite often we don’t give ourselves a good pat on the back for our creative developments on fashions timeline of history. The movement is born out of the Los Angeles surf culture of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Even if we look as legendary surfboard designer Shawn Stussy, you’ll find that he began selling printed T-shirts featuring the same trademark signature he used on his custom surfboards. At first, he was selling the Stussy items from his own car. Soon thereafter he expanded sales to boutiques once popularity has increased and Stussy had become a household name. To be clear, the two most important components of streetwear is T-shirts and exclusivity. Early streetwear brands took inspiration from the DIY aesthetic of punk, new wave, heavy metal and later hip hop cultures. Subsequently. well-known sportswear and fashion brands attached themselves to the emerging early 1980s hip hop scene such as Kangol and Adidas. At this point, the game just got interesting. Nike’s signing of soon-to-be basketball superstar Michael Jordan from their rival Adidas in 1984 changed the game altogether, as Nike now dominated the urban streetwear sneaker market in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

Marcelo Burlon photo by @bratislavtasicMarcel Burlon

Moving forward, we witnessed brand launches by the chief executives of major record companies with then heavyweights Russell Simmons of Def Jam launching his Phat Farm label, Sean Combs of Bad Boy with Sean John, and Jay-Z and Damon Dash of Roc-a-Fella Records launching Rocawear. Years later, even rap superstar 50 Cent launched his G-Unit clothing label, with the sneaker rights given to Reebok. This simply meant that the big fashion companies not only saw a future in streetwear but rather embraced the streetwear culture. So where does this leave streetwear now? Recently, we find an increase in established luxury brands entering into the market. Last year, Louis Vuitton proudly named Virgil Abloh (Off-White brand) as the brand menswear creative director. So then, what really popularized the streetwear trend? In a word, the decline of formal wear led to the rise of streetwear fashion. I recently reviewed a streetwear designer brand that peaked my interest.

Marcelo Burlon photo by @bratislavtasicMarcel Burlon

Marcelo Burlon was born in Argentinia. His approach to fashion has caught the attention of new generations on his very own rainbow tour of the social-media era. Moving with his parents to Porto Potenza Picena in Italy at 14, he would become a notorious club kid in Rimini. That was until a career organizing events for major fashion houses and DJ-ing relocated him to Milan in 2012 and paved the way for the launch of his streetwear brand Marcelo Burlon County of Milan. Five years on, he has become a fan phenomenon in Italy and beyond, and the poster boy for a new wave of fashion entrepreneurs who are set on challenging the establishment.

Lil Miquela has 1.5 million followers on Instagram. She’s 19-years-old, based in Los Angeles, a model and a musician.

The thing is, she’s also not real.

This computer-generated supermodel is the digital brainchild of an LA-based agency called Brud, which has recently received around $6 million in its latest funding round, led by Silicon Valley investors including Sequoia Capital.

That comes off the back of the fact that Lil Miquela, otherwise known as their resident “influencer”, make-believe though she is, is receiving real work.

Out front hiring her and various others that have been created, is the fashion industry, with brands from Balmain, Dior, Prada and Louis Vuitton having all jumped on the virtual avatar train.

Most recently, Lil Miquela featured in UGG’s 40th anniversary campaign, blending in seamlessly alongside two real-life influencers as though she were a natural part of the cast. For the unsuspecting onlooker, it’s not immediately clear she’s not.

The question is, do CGI models hold true value for such businesses, or is this just a fad? On the latest episode of the Innovators podcast by TheCurrent, I debate the topic with tech expert, Liz Bacelar

How often are you satisfied with the size and fit of your online purchases? In the past few years, return rates for clothing purchased online have reached close to 40%. In a poll reported on by BBC, 56% of respondents who purchased clothing online six months prior to May 2016 said they had returned at least one item. Apparel Magazine reports that 70% of all online clothing returns are caused by problems with fit.

In the U.S., online apparel sales accounted for more than 25% of overall apparel sales in 2017. But why do people shop online even though they have to return clothing that does not fit? How many more people would shop online if they could be certain about fit and size?

As retailers play with free delivery and free returns even if it hurts their business, the cost of returns continues to grow along with the rate of returns. Currently, each order sent back costs retailers from $3 to $12.

The number of returned goods also has a negative impact on the environment. The destruction of unsold and returned garments, especially in the luxury sector, has caused people to ask questions. The fashion industry is known as one of the largest polluters in the world.

Based on my research into the struggles of today’s retailers and what I’ve learned founding a company that develops 3D body modeling technology,I believe that solving fit problems could result in growth in the number of online shoppers, reduced returns and less waste. Thankfully, I’ve been observing innovations coming out of the technology sector that could help make significant progress in solving this industrywide issue.

“I’ve learned everything from scratch. I had no idea what I was doing when I started out,” says Leandra Medine, creator of the satirical style site Man Repeller. Today Medine’s name and her signature sense of style are synonymous with the New York fashion scene and her inimitable voice has cemented her status as one of the industry’s most formidable forces.

Medine launched Man Repeller as a junior college in 2010 at a time when blogging was still in its infancy and the term “influencer” had yet to be coined. She quickly generated a cult following by dispensing her daily fashion wisdom on “trends that women love and men hate” coupled with her irreverent social commentary. With an ethos that “an interest in fashion doesn’t minimize one’s intellect,” Medine emerged as a preeminent voice in an industry notoriously difficult to penetrate and long-dominated by legacy status.

“I really do believe that my opinion is worth being heard all the time,” laughs Medine, a lifelong New Yorker. “But I didn’t think Man Repeller was going to become my career until I realized that I had saved enough money and certainly had a smart and strategic enough business mind to start hiring other people. I thought to myself, ‘I have nothing to lose, so why not give it a try?’” she recalls. Medine’s instincts and unapologetic approach has continued to pay off. Coming of age during the “dawn of new media,” she admits it was easy to compare her website to its larger, flashier peers, but credits an unwavering trust in her vision and a resolve to remain entirely bootstrapped with keeping the business on course. “The reason we’ve been able to grow in this slow, steady, measured pace has been because we’ve never taken on any financing,” says Medine. “As a result, all of the goals and pressures that we’ve endured have been completely self-brought-on as motivators.”

NEW YORK, NY – Sadie Newman, Megan Williams, Alexina Graham, and Russell James prepare backstage for the 2018 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show on November 8, 2018. (Photo by Taylor Hill/FilmMagic)Getty

In 2014, fashion photographer Russell James released Angels, a 304-page book of black-and-white nude or intimate photos of top models he met through his work with Victoria’s Secret, including stars like Lily Aldridge, Gisele Bündchen, and Adriana Lima. (The book takes its name from the Victoria’s Secret Angels.) This was, James recently told me, largely an archival project. After a few years working as a photographer in other countries, James, originally from Australia, came to America as a generalist photographer in 1996, struck it big with iconic covers for magazines like Sports Illustrated, and has been shooting for Victoria’s Secret since 1997. So he was sitting on a massive photo trove. But it went over extremely well—especially with models, some of whom apparently told James they were disappointed that he didn’t include any photos of them. So on December 1st, James will release a 448-page collectors edition of Angels featuring new models.

But the cultural climate in 2018, as others have noted, is drastically different than that of 2014. Fashion and nude photography have, like so many other industries, come into the spotlight for a critical reevaluation. Longstanding conversations about whether these art forms empower or objectify their female subjects, contributing to a toxic and patriarchic world, have gained newfound traction. And since the start of the year, major stories have come to light of famous photographers and other art and fashion bigwigs taking abusive advantage of models. “There is certainly not no risk in doing something like this” in the current cultural moment, admits James. So I recently asked him how his awareness of the cultural climate affected the way he produced and positioned this project.

James, it is worth noting, has a solid reputation among his subjects and collaborators. Some of this may stem from the fact that he has never considered himself a “nude photographer,” doing naked or near-naked shoots for their own sake or for male eyes. He is equally fond of landscapes, for instance, and seems to see nude photography through a similar lens. (“I do love the light,” he says, “the form, the shape of the nude.”) Much more of it stems from his personal commitment to only shooting subjects with whom he can build rapport and trust. He has long avoided crude direction and overt sexualization, instead giving models a considerable amount of agency in their own portrayal.

That is clear in most of his work, but should be especially so in this new edition of Angels. Unlike his first archival image-based edition, since 2014 James has been working with each of the 35 new models in this version as full-fledged collaborators. Each of them took as much power as they wanted over the shoot itself, the photo selections, and the editing process. “I was able to really deliberately say, ‘okay, I want to do this,’” says James. “‘We can either work off my ideas or your ideas or a combination of ideas. We can look at the film and edit together.’” That seems to be part of why the book took four years to put together—a lot of scheduling effort with busy folks.

[“source=forbes]

For this former retail executive, becoming an entrepreneur was the realization of a life-long dream. But it wasn’t until the birth of her first son that Shennel Fuller decided to create her own children’s clothing line, Miles and Milan.

And according to TendLab CEO and Co-founder, Amy Henderson, there is no better time to make this decision:

…any parent who leaves their child to go to work—whether it’s a choice or financial necessity—must grapple with the distance it creates. There are times when we want to be with them, and we can’t be. And this forces us to question what we are doing, and why we are doing it. Answering this question forges us, like steel in molten fire, into stronger, more motivated versions of our former selves.

Like other successful entrepreneurs who leave the corporate world beyond, Fuller followed the fire in her belly and refused to take no for an answer. Her tenacity and fortitude were inherited; as she is the daughter of hard-working immigrant parents who instilled in her, an unparalleled work ethic.

With the support of her husband, parents and sister, this founder charted her own course to becoming an entrepreneur and hopes to inspire other women to do the same.

Fuller: My entrepreneurial journey started three years ago after my first son, Jackson was born. My background is corporate, and I’ve held a few executive positions. I was teetering and trying to figure out if I wanted to go back. I was always a very dedicated and hard worker. But now my hard work was focused on keeping this baby alive. I was trying to figure out how I could feel the most fulfilled. I wanted to be doing what I was most passionate about. I knew it was retail and fashion, so I wanted to continue being immersed in that world, while also having the flexibility of being with my son and not missing any milestones.

For a while, I did some consulting. I was helping a major corporation by revamping their whole retail strategy. I loved the freedom of consulting; the flexibility, being my boss, managing my schedule and being able to live in both worlds (motherhood and fashion). I would bring my son to my business meetings. My work was still getting done, so I kind of shifted the narrative. I felt like if I’m going to be giving you great ideas, and developing your strategy, I can also be rocking my son at the same time if he needs me. Which made me think, not only could I be consulting more but I can take it a step further. My dream was always to have my clothing line, and that’s pretty much the reason why I got into buying and working for those corporate companies, to begin with.

Shiva Safai, a model, entrepreneur and Instagram influencer, is influencing the way young girls and women view themselves through beauty and fashion. She’s taken her years of operating a criminal-background company and applied it to building her lifestyle brand. With the launch of her new jewelry collection in collaboration with Noush jewelry, Safai is building her empire one business at a time.

Shiva Safai, entrepreneur, on a photo shoot in Los Angeles, California.Aleksander Braun and Cameron West

“When thinking of the collection,” Safai stated. “I wanted to create pieces that are meaningful to myself, my culture and my followers in every detail. I want to show kids that anything you dream of you can achieve. You have to work hard and believe in yourself. There’s going to be people who won’t believe in you and who would want to destroy your dreams and your self-confidence. As long as you believe in yourself you can achieve anything you want.”

What started off as just a job, turned into the beginning of Safai’s entrepreneurial journey. Before the term ‘social media influencer’ emerged, she focused on the operation of her own company that conducted criminal-background checks. She quickly picked up on dealing with everything from traffic violations to felony charges and violations. “It never felt like work,” she shares. “I was intrigued by all the court cases and all the information I would get on a daily basis. One year turned into 10-years of running the company.”

She opened her first company with one of her cousins. Unfortunately, there was a falling out between the two of them. Through this experience, Safai strengthened her self-confidence and made a promise to herself to remain steadfast. “I was devastated,” she shares. “I wanted to give up and go back to Norway. I would call my mom every night. She kept saying, ‘you have worked so hard. You’ve done it once before and you can do it again. If you quit now, you’re going to let them win.’ My mom was there to talk me through it and give me the courage to restart the company again and I did. The second time I did it that was the successful one.”

Shiva Safai, lifestyle influencer, behind the scenes for her Jewelry Line shoot.Aleksander Braun and Cameron West

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

Safai had a commute from Orange County to Los Angeles where her office was located. She would bring her sleeping bag with her and sleep in the office, sometimes two-to-three days a week. With a short staff, Safai had to work longer hours to ensure that her company thrived. “If people said that one day I would get into fashion and beauty,” she states, “I would say ‘there’s no way.’ I never saw myself in that world, although, I always loved fashion. After dissolving the partnership [of the second company], this fell into my lap. It was a completely different world.”

“It taught me,” Safai continues, “that working hard and believing in something will get you to your dream; you just don’t give up. It’s never easy, ever. It always takes hard work. There were days where I wanted to give up, and I thought I was failing but I wasn’t. In actuality, I was growing. There were a lot of errors I made but I learned from it, and I did it bigger and better as the years went by. I’ve learned that sometimes things don’t go the way you want but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Your work ethic is important. That is one thing that has stuck with me since opening up my first company. It disciplined me to put in the hard work. Only you can be responsible for your own success; no one else can do the job for you.”

Gradually, Safai began modeling. It wasn’t until she and her fiancé, real-estate mogul Mohamed Hadid, joined the cast of E! Network’s Second Wives Club that she entertained the idea of starting her own fashion beauty media brand. “This is the next chapter of my life,” Safai smiles. “Being on the show made me realize this was the next career I was going to get into; where I would focus my energy.”

Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh in their outfits were a sight to behold at their Italian wedding. Fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee shares how their wedding attires were made. Check out the videos

Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone | Photo Credit: Instagram

Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh’s Italy wedding photos have left an indelible mark on our minds. With candid expressions, the couple’s Konkani and Sindhi wedding traditions spoke volumes about their closeness towards their families. While Deepika was a sight to behold in her dazzling red lehenga for their Sindhi wedding, Ranveer took a U-turn from his unconventional style and looked like the perfect groom for his ladylove.

Fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee, whose outfits were the highlight in the grand DeepVeer wedding, shared a glimpse of how both Deepika and Ranveer’s attires were made. He shared snippets from behind-the-scenes about how intricately Deepika’s lehenga was designed, hand-stitched and beautifully embroidered.

On the other hand, Ranveer’s wedding sherwani which was hand-knitted with golden buttons as fixtures and beautifully stitched dupatta with gold work, exhibited the designer’s love for revival in Indian traditional fashion. With decadent, monotone and simple ensembles, Ranveer and Deepika’s Sabyasachi creations have given several couples some wedding outfit ideas.

Check out the making of Ranveer’s sherwani and Deepika’s lehenga in these videos…

After DeepVeer’s Bangalore wedding reception on November 21, the couple has hosted another wedding reception today for Ranveer’s family and later they will hold a party to celebrate with their industry friends. The Mumbai reception today is expected to commence at 8 pm that will take place at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

The couple married in Villa del Balbianello at Lake Como in Italy. Instead of a horse, Ranveer chose to arrive with his baraat on a seaplane since the Villa was surrounded by the water body.

“I had no idea it would become as big as it is.” The Perth-born accessories supremo behind the Le Skinny sunglasses (perched atop the noses of every Kardashian) still has a few more surprises up her spangly sleeve.

Poppy Lissiman – of the namesake accessories label she founded in 2008 – is not one to walk a well-worn path. The Perth-raised, Sydney-based designer’s trend-bucking accessories, in outrageous shapes and loud colours, slingshot her to cult status at the tender age of 19. Putting her kaleidoscope of embellished bags, clutches, key chains, jewellery and iPhone covers aside, it was her kooky sunglasses, most notably the Le Skinny style, which set social media alight after debuting in May 2017 – (literally) reshaping the eyewear market overnight. She’s since amassed more than 160,000 Instagram followers.

“I had no idea it would become as big as it is”, says Lissiman in earnest. “We certainly had a stream of [clutch] orders coming from overseas prior to this in 2013 and 2014, which was fairly steady until the spike of Le Skinnys last year.”

The angular sunglasses perched atop the noses of every Kardashian, Hadid and high-flying influencer known to Instagram exude a futuristic “Matrix” attitude and come in mandarin, lilac and clear hues. Alongside fellow Australian label Le Specs (whose team she fondly describes as being “such lovely people”), Lissiman had the fortuitous timing of tapping into the ’90s-inflected shock-factor fashion zeitgeist.

Accessory design runs in her blood. Lissiman’s mum Suzi was an accessory buyer and taught her to sew at 10 years old. But while privy to the rag trade growing up, Lissiman had other ideas as a teenager. “The interest in fashion was always there. I remember having these expensive subscriptions to international magazines such as Collezione and saving up all summer for Louis Vuitton hair bobbles – but back then, all I really wanted was to be a doctor.” But when she didn’t get the marks to study medicine, a six-month graphic design course followed, trailed by a two-week fashion course at Curtin University in Perth. But it took a retail role managing a Zomp Shoes store for something to click. “It was the first time I met people like me, other fashion nerds. Put it this way, when Alexander McQueen died we all cried.”

Zomp Shoes also proved seminal in Lissiman’s love and understanding of retail and the customer experience. It was these lessons she later applied to founding Poppy Lissiman Addition (a boutique in Perth’s Claremont) where she stocked her own line of ball gowns beside international labels including Mara Hoffman, L’America and Opening Ceremony. When she couldn’t find the right accessories to complement her zany, whimsical aesthetic, she decided to design her own.

“In the beginning I designed a lot for myself. It was very much a ‘I want this, so I’ll make this’ mentality,” she says. Ironically, it was this very instinct that almost derailed some serious sales.

STAY IN THE KNOW

Get our pick of the best news, features and events delivered twice a week

“I must admit my first sunglasses collection went terribly, even my friends didn’t buy them,” she says. “I almost didn’t do another one.” Lucky for us, she did. “I had the sample for Le Skinny on my kitchen counter and, having tried them on, they didn’t suit me at all. And so I decided against putting them into production. It wasn’t until a stylist friend, Thom Townsend, came over, saw them lying there, tried them on and told me I just had to make them.” With the help of social media, the Le Skinny heralded a new attitude in accessories and the rest is street-style history.

Flash forward to today and it’s not surprising the home of pop culture, the USA, is her biggest market. But her line of pop-inspired vegan-leather bags perform best on home turf (led by the best-selling South Beach Shell Shoulder Bag, which involves gold shell embellishments moulded from a scallop shell Lissiman found out the front of her parent’s house on South Beach in Perth’s Fremantle).

Lissiman hints she is keen to keep surprising her customers. “I think once you do one thing, you tend to want to swing the other way,” she says.

In full-throttle design mode as she works towards the looming production deadline of glitter wallets and nylon camera bags, which are slated to arrive before Christmas, the designer admits inspiration is as unconventional as her designs. “I get my best ideas when I’m having a massage, not that I have them all the time. Just the other day I was stuck in traffic and the tail lights of the car in front had an interesting shape. I literally just took a photo of their bumper as inspiration for a shape so, yeah, inspiration can come from absolutely anywhere.”

The designer also realised it was difficult to find eyewear made from premium materials at the right price point (her sunglasses retail between $125 and $145). “We wanted a price point that’s open to everyone. We felt we could still be a fashion-y brand without feeling the need to exclude people from the trend just to make an extra buck,” she says.

When asked how she handled the recent upshot in demand, Lissiman credits her “tight ship” team, which includes her parents Suzi and Skip Lissiman and marketing manager, Candy Wood. Lissiman also notes while everyone has their individual roles, the label is run very much like a start-up with many hats being swapped one day to the next. In addition to designing, Lissiman also oversees the label’s social-media accounts, graphic design and some of the customer service, too. And it was only earlier this year the PR was outsourced for the first time.

Thanks to Lissiman’s intimate involvement and her distinctly electric aesthetic, what was once a start-up sunglasses label has brazenly cut through the noise to be embraced by the mainstream. Keeping pace with its international appeal, Lissiman’s sights are set on expanding the label’s global footprint by strengthening relationships with wholesalers including Net-a-Porter and Galeries Lafayette, Kith and Lissiman-approved boutiques dotted across Cannes, Nice and Paris.

Between toying with the idea to return to designing wearable ball gowns, costume jewellery in the works and a range of vegan wallets launching early next year, the future looks fittingly technicolour for Poppy Lissiman. Wherever the path may lead one thing you can expect from her is the unexpected. “Every time I design, I think, ‘Have I seen this yet?’”